The exact way the terrorists who attacked France last Friday communicated with each other, and their handlers, in the run-up to the attack is not yet clear, but the attack has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Europe and the United States to renew their call to regulate the use of new encryption technologies which allow users to “go dark” and make it difficult, if not altogether impossible, to retrieve the contents of communication.

Adding math talk to story time at home is a winning equation for children’s math achievement, according to new research. The study shows a marked increase in math achievement among children whose families used Bedtime Math, an iPad app that delivers engaging math story problems for parents and children to solve together. A recent study found that math-anxious parents who help their children with math homework actually undermine their children’s math achievement – but the new findings demonstrate that structured, positive interactions around math at home can cut the link between parents’ uneasiness about math and children’s low math achievement.

A lawsuitfiled on Tuesday in a federal court in New York claims that the FBI threatened to keep Awais Sajjad on the no-fly list unless he agreed to work as an FBI informant. Sajjad, a lawful permanent U.S. resident living in New York, learned in September 2012 that he was on the no-fly list as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Sajjad charges that FBI agents told him that unless he agreed to spy on local Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey, he would be kept on the no-flu list.

The U.S. Intelligence Advisory Board, a panel of fourteen highly regarded and experienced experts, many of whom past holder of high-level national security positions, has submitted a secret report to President Obama in which they say that the intense, 12-year focus of the intelligence community on finding and fighting terrorism has distorted the priorities, resource allocation, and training within that community. Former Senator David Boren, a member of the panel, asks: “in the long run, what’s more important to America: Afghanistan or China?”

Last year, the U.S. government ended SBInet, a major and unsuccessful attempt to build a virtual fence along the border that cost nearly $1 billion before it was killed; DHS is now testing aerostats, and an 80-foot tower with similar surveillance capabilities, for border security as part of an effort to exploit technologies that have been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Indian Ocean tsunami alert system to be tested on 12 October * Cyber-fraud tops $93 billion a year in Latin America * Innocents duped into drug smuggling * Military’s first cargo-carrying drone aircraft is going to war * Mexico announces new enforcement push in Veracruz state announced * Janet Napolitano Takes on Critics of Immigration